“Nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any
moral or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong
to these matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of
mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions;
they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by
the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the
first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director,
regulator, the standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live without
definition; but prudence is cautious how she defines. Our courts cannot be more
fearful in suffering fictitious cases to be brought before them for eliciting
their determination on a point of law than prudent moralists are in putting
extreme and hazardous cases of conscience upon emergencies not existing.”—English
statesman Edmund Burke, Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs
(1791)
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